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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Cat's Elegy 



THE CAT'S 
ELEGY 



By r 

GELETT BURGESS 

and 

BURGES JOHNSON 




CHICAGO 
A. C. McCLURG & CO. 

2913 



Copyright t> ^ 3 ^ 

A. C McCLURG & Ca ' A *j 

Published March, 19i3 ', ^ '-^ 



©CU332780 



The Cat's Elegy 




THE tea-bell tolls for Nell 
to pass the tray, 
The glowing cook winds 
slowly up the clock, 
The ashman homeward wends his 

weary way 
And leaves a trail of cinders round 
the block. 






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O W fade the dingy fences on 

our sight, 
And all the air is still, except, 
maybe, 
"Where some street-organ, faintly 

through the night, 
Wafts "Holy City" and "The Bam- 
boo Tree." 







le- 



Ha; 

left's 




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AVE that from yonder 
sparsely slated roof 
A moping Tom doth moan- 
ingly complain 
(While other felines darkly hold 

aloof) 
That his Maria lucklessly 
was slain. 




£0:3 





IV 

BENEATH the shade yon 
dying pear tree sheds, 
Where rest tomato cans on 
ashy heaps, 
Where cast-off garments line the 

pansy beds, 
The flattened form of poor Maria 
sleeps. 




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THE wheezy call of milkmen 
in the morn, \ 

The cook's insistent, matuti- 
nal grouch, 
The scissors grinder's harsh and rau- 
cous horn 
No more shall rouse her from her 
weedy couch. 





DC3 




OFT sought she out appointed 
rendezvous, 
In dalliance spent the fair- 
est of her days, 
Or nightly studied, with her art in 

view. 
The acoustic properties of alley-ways. 



it. 




J 

V 






IX 



IT 



LET not some groomed lap 
cat e'er decry 
The humble realm of that 
backyard obscure — 
The battered gate, the clothesline 

whence there fly '^^ 

The short and simple flannels 
the poor. 








THE boast of Tortoise-shell, 
the pomp of Manx, 
The Persian, bearing pedi- 
gree profound, 
All dread alike the catcher's nimble 

shanks — 
The public highways lead but to the 
pound. 




^ 




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FULL many a nightly prowl- 
er, gaunt and lean; 
Has filled this alley with his 
music rare; 
Full many a cat is bom to howl un- 
seen, 
And waste his sweetness on the city 





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*0R you, ye proud, impute to 
him the sin, 
Who in his nightshirt did 
his window raise, 
And, hurling down his missile at the 

din. 
Ended the joyance of her 
heartfelt lays! 








i * > 



/ 1 



RETURNING from some 
animated bust, 
Back to his mansion, pale 
and sick at heart, 
Maria's voice provoked his latent 

lust 
For blood ; she fell a victim to her art. 



A. 




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p 



ERHAPS in this neglected 

form has been 
A soul that in Bubastis 
SB^ might have reigned; 

The Goddess Pasht have recognized 

as kin; 
Or ruled Kilkenny ere its glory waned. 







XV 



^AR from the madding 

crowd she was not f eased, 
The while her vagrom fan- 
cies made her stray 
Along the sequestered alley, where 

she raised "^ 

The nightly noisy tenor of 
her lay. 




~DC3 
CZDD 



I 







F 





OR who, to grim insomnia 
prey, 
That weird elusive being e'er 
could mark? 
Who has not raised his window in 

dismay 
And blindly cast some weapon 
through the dark ? 




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Y 



XVII 

ET on some pavement, soon 

or late, there lies 
The cat who tortures slum- 
ber while she prowls ; 
While from the tomb the voice of 

Nature cries, 
As some small urchin imitates her 
howls. 







XVIII 

BUT Requies Cat, now that 
she is dead 
(Nine times she died, and 
therefore quite deceased) 
Approach and read (with friends to 

hold thy head) 
This touching tribute to the 
little beast. 





H 



ERE lies poor Puss, with 

collar unbedight, 
A homeless cat, a thing of 
skin and bone, 
Full-throated rose her swan song on 

the night, 
And now the dust-heap claims her 
for its own. 



^, 




MAR 13 1913 



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